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An anonymous reader writes A newly discovered planet in a binary, or twin, star system located 3,000 light-years from Earth is expanding astronomers' notions of where Earth-like planets can form. At twice the mass of Earth, the planet orbits one of the stars in the binary system at almost exactly the same distance at which Earth orbits the sun. However, because the planet's host star is much dimmer than the sun, the planet is much colder than Earth. "This greatly expands the potential locations to discover habitable planets in the future," said Scott Gaudi, professor of astronomy at Ohio State. "Half the stars in the galaxy are in binary systems. We had no idea if Earth-like planets in Earth-like orbits could even form in these systems."

r.e. FTL research: you raise some good points.
But nobody (except maybe a Comi-Con panel) is going to get behind funding FTL research.
Our species also has some baby steps to work on first: in no particular order... orbital solar power, fusion, space elevators, mars colonies, asteroid mining. *shrug* Let's solve those things first because they will (eventually) set the stage for interstellar work, including FTL research.

As for basic physics research, I would say China is showing some interest in basic re

Considering the article states that this planet has an estimated surface temperature of 352 Fahrenheit, it would make Hoth seem like a tropical resort, considering warm blooded animals like Tauntauns were able to survive on the surface. Hoth would have been more like the Antarctic, around 70 Fahrenheit by comparison.

Simple - your keyboard is mapped incorrectly. It inserts some high-numbered UTF character into your text when you press the key marked with the hyphen glyph and intended to insert the character with ASCII code 45.

Hang on - are you composing your replies in a word processor instead of using a text editor?

We know nothing about this planet's atmosphere. The low flux of energy from its star tells us that its stratosphere (if present) must be very cold, but says nothing about its surface temperature. It could have a much deeper troposphere, and thus a much stronger greenhouse effect than Earth has.

No depth of troposphere can turn a Neptune or Pluto warmer than Earth.

Neptune's interior temperature is thought to be 7000K. Venus, a bit smaller than Earth, has a surface >500K hotter than its tropopause. I see no physical reason that this super-Earth couldn't have much more atmosphere than Venus. 220K from tropopause to surface would get you to liquid water.